


Whistle In the Dark

by TheseusInTheMaze



Category: That Guy with the Glasses/Channel Awesome
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Meta, Spoilers: To Boldly Flee, hand trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-23
Updated: 2013-11-23
Packaged: 2018-01-02 09:31:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/pseuds/TheseusInTheMaze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were many things in the Plot Hole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whistle In the Dark

There were many things in the Plot Hole. It wouldn't really do to say there were the "expected" things, because... well, what WOULD one expect to find in a plot hole? Let alone one that merited its own capital letters?

But the Plot Hole was full of stories. Dreams, fragments, ideas, narratives - all different names for the same basic thing.

And the Critic participated in all of them. Sometimes he was a he, or a she, or a zie, or an it, or a they. Sometimes he (or she, or zie, or whatnot) had two legs and thumbs and the teeth of an omnivore. Sometimes, it was tentacles and suckers, or an exoskeleton, or no nervous system whatsoever. But the essential Critic - the nitpickiness, the explosive temper, and all of the other things that made the Critic the Critic - stayed around, albeit expressed in who knew how many different ways.

It took some getting used to. The first jolt of a new body always felt alien - then the next second passed, and it had always been the Critic's body, and it would be strange to think otherwise.

It was the same this time. The Critic opened _her_ eyes and blinked, the shock of a solid body, with calcium rich bones and iron thick blood making her stagger. The she blinked her eyes (strange things, filled with aqueous humor), and it was normal as the hat on her head or the tie hanging from her neck.

She looked around, waiting for the story to coalesce around her. When it did, it would make a noise like a massive soap bubble popping, the sort of noise that reverberates through the head down to the skull.

Nothing happened.

Well, maybe she'd missed the sound - that did happen sometimes. Usually in situations that were a bit more... action packed than this. Like the time with the land mine. With a shrug, the Critic stuck her hands in her pockets (grateful, in some obscure way, to have both hands and pockets to put them in) and began to walk. As she walked, the world formed itself around her. 

It was a deep, dark forest - the kind Hansel and Gretel got lost in, the kind Baba Yaga's house lurked in, and where Artemis held her hunts. It was old, and it felt old. The trees towered, blocking out the sky with their immense, dripping branches, and the ground was thick with dead, wet leaves. They were slimy under the Critic's bare feet, and she slipped several times as she wandered around, squinting through the mist that beaded on her glasses. The place was starting to give her the creeps - it was entirely too quiet, and she always felt as if there was something right behind her, walking in time with her. She tried to change her stride a few times, but either there really was nothing behind her, or it kept in perfect time. She tried not to think about it.

For want of anything else to do, she started to whistle. It was a tune she vaguely remembered, from who knew when - something to do with... ducks?

Something whistled the tune back, clumsy and stilted.

The Critic froze for a solid minute, fear slithering around her ankles like snakes. Then she took a step.

Nothing happened.

The Critic took another step. 

Nothing continued to happen.

Feeling somewhat braver, the Critic began to whistle again.

Something whistled back, slightly more in tune this time.

The Critic froze again, then forced herself forward, still whistling. The thing whistled back, carrying the tune raggedly.

For lack of anything better to do, the Critic followed the sound. Something that whistled had to be nice, right? After all, dolphins whistled, and they were the Mister Rogers of the animal kingdom!

(It should be noted that, even in a story that wasn't the Critic's own, the Critic's grasp of zoology was minimal at best).

The whistling led her for a good long while - at least it felt like one, although the only way the light from the sky changed was from the shadows of the leaves and the branches of the massive trees. The leaves under her bare feet were slimy and cold, and she was beginning to lose feeling in her toes. She was also running out of things to whistle - she'd gone through a bunch of songs that pinged as "annoying", and was starting in on bits and pieces of remembered music from other stories. There were pieces of music heard only by those born Deaf, and melodies created by species that had no way of perceiving sound. The thing whistling it back made them sound eerier, more alien.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity (and after the world had grown around the Critic like mold, damp and dark and musty), she came upon a massive downed tree. It was huge, the kind of tree that a god could hang from for three days, or a snake would dangle from with some kind of fruit in its mouth. It was huge, and old, and rotten, roiling with things that crawled, things that wriggled, things without eyes and things with too many legs. 

The whistling was coming from under the log, and it sounded... off. There was a wheezy quality to it, and against all odds, it sounded wet. 

And the Critic stopped whistling, because her mouth went dry with terror. 

There was an arm coming out from under the log. At least, the Critic assumed it was an arm. It was long and grey and slimy, like a dead earthworm, and there was something boneless about it. The arm was impossibly long, as long as the Critic's leg in the very least, and there were things that might have been fingers on the end of it, albeit boneless, crawling things. But that was what proved it was an arm, right? Long appendage with a bunch of littler appendages attached to it meant arm, right? 

The Critic was aware that she was gibbering with the confines of her head. There was something terrifying about the thing under the log, something elementally horrific in an unexplainable way. It stank of something old and rotten, moldy and dead. And it was still whistling.

"Well. Um." The Critic was surprised at her own voice - both at speaking out loud in the first place, and the fact that it sounded so... normal. But that was how it always was, just like with bodies. First it was strange and alien, and then a second later, it was as homey as ever.

"Wull. Em," the thing under the log said, and the voice was making the Critic's skin crawl like the maggots on the log.

The thing under the log was crawling out. Another long, boneless arm came into view, with more of those slimy fingers. Then a head emerged, covered in... well, it wasn't hair. It was long and black and stringy, and a little piece of the Critic's brain (the part that always noticed all the things that made everyone else roll their eyes at the nitpicking) said something about video tapes and television sets, but that wasn't right either. The... thing didn't have a face. The stringy black stuff (which looked a bit like fungus, or maybe more mold?) was growing off the top of the "head", and there was no face. There were not any features. There weren't even any indentations where features might go. It was like the belly of a dead salamander. 

The head (the Critic was pretty sure it was a head) attached to the body by a short, squat neck, and there was a long, ragged tear in it. That was where the whistling was coming from. The edges of the tear were flapping in time with the air moving in and out. The rest of the thing was still under the log. The Critic was grateful for that much, at least.

"What are you?" The Critic knew she should run - every part of her body, down to the cells in her liver, were telling her to run - but she couldn't. Something was holding her in place, forcing the words out of her throat. The story was finally taking hold, it seemed.

"Wut or yew?" the thing parroted back. It moved closer to her, wriggling across the wet leaves with a wet crackling noise.

"I... come in peace?" The Critic's arm was going forward, holding one hand out to the thing. The Critic was growling in her head, yanking at the story, trying to break free. It held her captive, like a mouse in a glue trap.

"Oi gum en peez," the thing said, and one of the long tentacle finger... things grabbed the Critic's hand, squeezing.

The slime on its skin burned, and the Critic bit back a scream, feeling it trying to crawl out of her throat like a rat, its fur thick and rank against her cheeks, its nails scrabbling at her tongue. It came out as a weak giggle.

The thing giggled back at her through the hole in its neck and wrapped a tentacle around her thumb. Then it twisted. 

The bone broke with a noise like a stick being stepped on, and the noise was amazingly sharp, ringing out in the damp, soggy air.

The Critic sobbed, feeling the pain wash over her like a wave of filthy water. 

The thing chuckled in the back of its throat and broke her other finger. The noise was softer, damper, and the Critic could feel her skin blistering where the thing's skin touched hers, like she was trying to hold acid in her cupped hands. 

The Critic closed her eyes, her whole face tight with concentration. She could almost feel the story holding her now, like a massive shark's mouth, or a bear trap. It took effort to concentrate on that, when the pain in her hand (then arm - the thing was moving up) ate at her. It took even more effort to visualize _herself_ , in the story, trapped in the sharp teeth of the story itself. She had become adept at simply sliding into the narrative, become the hero, the victim, the mentor, or any of the other roles the Plot Hole dumped her into, as it saw fit. 

But she saw herself (himself, zerself, themself, itself) eventually, a glowing outline, framed in massive, yellowing teeth. The terror was making her skin crawl and her teeth chatter, and somehow the thing was imitating the chatter, even without any visible teeth. 

The Critic pulled her arm out of the teeth of the story, and the pain was... there wasn't a word for the pain of it, except that it crawled under her skin like a centipede, legs scuttling, shiny and bright and pinching. She left a piece of herself in the jaws of the story, and that was bad. Then she opened her eyes and found herself staring straight into the thing's face, or at least, what would have been its face if it had any type of features. She sobbed quietly, and the thing sobbed back, its long black hair-stuff reaching out and stroking her cheek. The skin began to smoke, and there was a smell like burning bacon.

The Critic did not scream. She closed her eyes and she saw the massive jaws of the story, with the tattered pieces of skin and muscle from her right arm. 

She used her right arm to free her left one, and that was just as painful, leaving more pieces of herself behind, but the piece of herself that stood barefoot on the slimy leaves had lost control of its bladder, hot piss splattering across her feet, and the pain had gotten to the point that it didn't feel like pain anymore - there were flashes of light and the smell of burnt bacon, but it hurt beyond any pain.

The Critic used her tattered arms to free her head and her neck from the jaws of the story, as the thing wrapped its slimy finger-things around her throat. She freed her torso next, and her hips. Her feet were the hardest, her feet and her legs. There was a lot of her left in the jaws of that story, by the time she was done wriggling and yanking out of the yellowed ivory. Bits of skin and muscle, a few toes, a finger or two, clumps of hair. 

The last thing she saw - or at least, the body she had briefly inhabited saw - was black, stringy hair going for her eyes.

And then she was free, flapping in the wind of the Plot Hole, letting herself (or himself, or whatever) be pulled where the plot demanded it.

He opened his eyes, and his body was all wrong. He blinked, and it was perfectly fine. Well, no - something felt like it was missing. A lot of something. Almost as if big chunks of his body were just... missing. But that didn't matter too much right now.

There was a woman looking down at him with a concerned expression. "You okay, Donnie?"

He shivered, feeling the last remains of some weird terror leave his body like smoke. "Yeah," he said, "I'm fine." He fiddled with his hat, and he grinned at her. Things were going to be alright. He just... had a feeling.

Sticking his hands in his pockets, he walked down the hallway, whistling.


End file.
